November.Barcelona.

Sunlight shattered against the blinds, splintering into pallid streaks that cast long shadows over the IV stand. Lorenzo’s fingers traced the starched sheet, white as the winter light bleeding through Barcelona’s skyline. Outside, dawn pooled like liquid gold.

He’d memorized the rhythm of this place—the squeak of rubber soles at 7:30 a.m., the clatter of meal carts, the way your pen clicked softly against the clipboard as you paused to adjust his drip. Always precise. Always gentle. His eyes remained closed, lashes trembling faintly.

The scent of disinfectant lingered, sharp and clinical, but beneath it, your hand cream. Something faintly floral, like jasmine clinging to chapel stones after rain. He’d noticed it weeks ago when you leaned over to check his heart rhythm. A tremor then, mistaken for fever. Now he cataloged every detail: how your laughter dissolved into a cough behind the nurses’ station, the furrow between your brows while scribbling notes, the hair escaping your ponytail as you bent down to tie your shoes. The slight bulge at the knees of your scrubs from hours of sitting—how many feverish nights had he found himself wanting to press his face into those creases and weep?

"Gracias," he murmured when you handed him the pills, his voice frayed. His smile rehearsed, courtesy honed by years of apologies for fragility. But now the words congealed in his throat, not from weakness, but from the lingering warmth where your thumb had grazed his knuckle.

"Temperature’s normal," you said, pen scratching across the clipboard. "Shall I open the window? There’s sunlight today."

He shook his head, knuckles digging into the crumpled sheet. A lie. Truth yearned to nod, to watch you rise on tiptoe reaching for the rusted window latch, your hair gilded to amber by backlight. But if the window opened, the wind would steal what little remained of you—that ghost of floral warmth clinging to the air.